Thomas Franz

Thomas Franz received the M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in mechanical engineering from the University of Hannover and University of Bremen, Germany, in 1992 and 1998. With postdoctoral fellowships from the South African National Research Foundation and the Claude Harris Leon Foundation, he extended his research at the Centre for Research in Computational and Applied Mechanics at the University of Cape Town, Cape Town, South Africa, between 1998 and 2001. In 2002, he joined the Chris Barnard Division of Cardiothoracic Surgery, University of Cape Town. He has been heading the Biomechanical Sciences Group which focuses on computational and applied biomechanics and mechanobiology in the development of regenerative therapies for cardiovascular diseases, the most severe class of chronic diseases.